


One Night in the Sun/The Grit That Seeds the Pearl

by aboxthecolourofheartache



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Dissociation, Dubious Morality, Exposure, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internal Conflict, Introspection, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, dissociating during an overlong religious service aka the lapsed-Catholic academic experience, he gets better but that doesn't mean he's not gonna be extra about it, neutral evil wizard's guide to crises of morality, the heat/weather kind sorry nothing sexy alas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27713471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aboxthecolourofheartache/pseuds/aboxthecolourofheartache
Summary: Essek’s monstrosity breathes down his neck, and its breath is searing cold.  He shivers, vaguely aware that feeling cold under the glare of the sun is either a moral failing or a sign of heat exhaustion.
Relationships: The Mighty Nein & Essek Thelyss
Comments: 21
Kudos: 78





	One Night in the Sun/The Grit That Seeds the Pearl

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you just have to sit down and write almost 5k words of flowery neutral evil navel-gazing, okay? And for those of you who might be concerned about such things, for the purposes of this story, Essek's perception of the Nein's intentions is highly colored by his own rather ruthless outlook. Take everything with a grain of salt and remember that "chill" does not exist in Essek's dictionary.

> “Watch out for intellect,  
>  because it knows so much it knows nothing  
>  and leaves you hanging upside down,  
>  mouthing knowledge as your heart  
>  falls out of your mouth.”  
>  \- Anne Sexton, _Admonitions to a Special Place_

  


Dawn will not break for almost an hour yet, but the drow in the twelve-sided plaza, with their sensitive darkvision, can already feel the coming daylight like watchful, unseen eyes. Or at least, that is how Essek feels the steadily rising sun. The fine hairs on the back of his neck lift with Rosohna’s cool, nighttime mist. He flexes his fingers, resettling his hands on his knees. 

_Twelve hours_ , he reminds himself, smoothing any and all discomfort from his face. From first to last light. 

The sun rises inexorably. 

The Bright Queen declared a holiday for the twelveday following the beacons’ return to Rosohna. Twelve days of ritual, ceremonies, homilies, abstinence, fasting - all culminating in a very public devotional vigil. Essek, representing not only the Lens but also den Thelyss, is expected to participate in exulting the Luxon’s beacons. 

Thus, Essek kneels in the Bright Queen’s chapel plaza, strongly considering stealing the benighted things again. Not out of damning hunger for knowledge this time, but to vent his teeth-gnashing pique. The sleek apparatus of the Lens must refocus, and he cannot think of a worse waste of his shadows’ precious time or a more ironic waste of his. Stacks of post-war paperwork an ell high teeter on his desk, and he has treason to continue burying. 

Instead, he is here, holding a parasol of false piety over his apostasy. 

It probably serves him right. 

To his left, someone yawns. Essek forces his shoulders to relax even as the sky fades towards pink. He has had time to trance only twice in the last five days. Crisis after crisis, recalibrating the Lens’ priority operations, allocating the Lens’ remaining wartime surplus budget into a hundred different investments to keep it from sluicing back into the treasury, stomping his couture heeled boots on the sneaky fingers of hawkish interests who still want the benefits of his means without the wartime mandates that oblige transparency between the Lens and the military. Every spare moment he can carve from his schedule goes to his research or self-protection, not rest. 

Well, almost every spare moment. Essek took the time to put some anonymous clout behind Verin’s earnest but clumsily-worded petition on behalf of the surviving families of Bazzoxan’s casualties. Everything his little brother said is true, of course, but one does not juice government officials for money by reminding them of their duty and skirting the edges of their moral failings. Essek prefers highlighting any prestige to be gained, or, failing that, extortion. He had to pull a few courtiers by the short hairs to make it happen, but expedited stipends are due to be issued within the fortnight. 

Essek wonders if he would even recognize himself without the exhaustion at this point. It weighs his soul to center like a plumb bob. Twelve days of moderated fasting have not helped. He smiles to himself, appreciating the ugly irony of deliberate interrogation tactics versus self-neglect and religious observance. His position as Shadowhand only made him more suspicious of the trappings of religion. He sees too much of his own work in it, but then, Essek was born a cynic. 

The sun crests the horizon, its first rays lancing thousands of dark-accustomed eyes. Essek is silent in the midst of a collective, pained hiss. The crowd faces east, magnetized to the wrong pole. They will turn throughout the day to follow the sun. Everyone is naked to the waist: men, women, those with more nebulous identities - the only dispensations made are for the physically young, the physically elderly, and anyone whose chest is a source of distress in self-image. The Luxon’s worshipers are supposed to welcome the sun’s touch on their skin. Essek dreads the weight of his mantle on his blistered shoulders tomorrow. Healing the Light’s gifts is frowned upon. 

He stands with everyone else at the first call to rise, knees creaking. Dawn turns the Bright Queen’s hair gold as she lifts her arms heavenward, singing down the light, asking the Luxon to scorch away the darkness within the assembled souls. 

_Best of luck with that_ , Essek thinks. 

He glances up discreetly, noting the current positions of the Bright Queen’s guards. He and the Dusk Captain have long since given up trying to persuade Leylas Kryn to limit her public role in collective worship. Rather, Quana Kryn took him aside when he first donned his mantle of office and explained in no uncertain terms that if he were to bring up the matter of security during religious services, he would be the Dynasty’s briefest-tenured Shadowhand. 

The Dusk Captain stands at the Bright Queen’s right hand, fully armored, visor down. This is a lovers’ compromise, hard won. Leylas Kryn worships in the midst of her people; Quana Kryn’s handpicked guards worship alongside her. They are spelled to protect their senses from the sun and praise the Luxon with their service to the Bright Queen. Essek’s people are at large in the crowd. He would never live it down if an assassin struck during a public vigil. 

The Luxon’s clergy help maintain order, too. Dozens of Luxonborn, in their distinctive sashes, walk through the rows of devotees. This isn’t counting the lay-acolytes taking up their posts at intervals in the assembly. And on high holidays like this, there are clerics - Luminaries, mostly, a few Brands - who take their calling into the Dungeon of Penance. Without the chance to repent, what kind of penance would it be? Until recently, Essek did not appreciate the sentiment. 

Rosohna’s eternal night turns to day even in the darkest cells of the Dungeon. Essek knows that there are prisoners in its depths so far past sanity that they believe they have only been held for a handful of days. The weeks and months between high holidays are one, long night to them. Luminaries arrive with their personal, rare dawns. Days pass quickly, but the nights last and last. For beings of the sunlit world, accustomed to light until they come into the Dungeon’s clutches, the fleeting day must be more torment than the dark. 

Essek catches himself contemplating an artificial, normalized night/day cycle for those prisoners. It would not be difficult to implement. No, the difficulty lies in explaining his sudden and uncharacteristic interest in reform of prison conditions. He’s having trouble explaining it to himself, much less the court. 

He knows that the generous consider him to be understated and introspective about his faith. The shrewd see his faith as real but perfunctory and shallow. Citing his rarely-voiced religiosity, if played right, could misdirect suspicions of lax belief. He could frame the suggestion as an act of mercy inspired by the Luxon beacons’ safe return. In a way, it would be just that. Essek could spin this bit of reform to his advantage. If he can do the wrong thing for important reasons, why not try doing important things for the wrong reasons? 

...He is giving far, far too much thought to a passing, inadvisable notion. 

Discomfited, Essek pushes the thought from his head and instead runs mental scenarios and counter-scenarios for removing the Empire mole currently embedded in the Dynasty’s mint. When he bores of that, he toys with a dunamantic paradox, throwing variables at it to see where they bounce. 

The sun climbs in the sky. 

The day is clear and the brightness intense. Essek was already feeling muzzy-headed from exhaustion, missed meals, and stress when he took his place in the courtyard before the vigil. His pulse booms softly behind his temples. Even with his eyes closed, he sees white-grey static. Settling into it, the migraine-like aura becomes almost meditative. 

Luxonborn with twelve- and five-sided mirrors flash the sun over the crowd in dizzying patterns. Essek knows trancing to rest and the hyperfocus of research, but he has never been susceptible to the transportive aspects of worship. He finds that meditation gives him enough of the appearance of participating to remain unsuspected. Today, he is having trouble finding that cool distance. Sweat slides down the hinge of his jaw, and his lips feel papery-dry. 

One of the umavi weeps openly in the circle closest to the Bright Queen. 

Essek will live for centuries if he can evade the headsman’s axe, but he is not consecuted and is thus keenly aware of the insidious tick of the clock in a way the consecuted have forgotten. They think they will always have time for everything, if not in their current life then in the next, but Essek is a student of time. Every echo he pulls into this timeline is a reminder that paths diverge - diverge and potentially _fail_ \- every instant. Essek will not be an echo for some iteration of him in another timeline to conjure. He will not fail, _cannot_ fail. 

Pending his consecution, as the first life of this soul, Essek is the fleck of grit that seeds the pearl, nothing more. Unconsecuted, he is a new soul in a culture that finds little inherent value in novelty. What he wants to know is whether consecution is worth the gamble with the spectre of achess. 

Essek does not believe the Luxon is a god, and even if it were, he could never worship a deity that demanded the slow death of his curiosity in exchange for everlasting life. 

Essek came into this world of unending, perfect souls just Essek, no previous lives to smooth his way. Then, adding insult to injury, everything he has achieved as ‘just Essek’ could belong to some future self who will look back on this first, unrefined life with the same disdainful pity he sees in the umavis’ eyes whenever he comes to their attention. He is nothing; he has nothing. 

Except the lies. 

Essek learned young the zinging rush of a lie, a bit of enlivening danger and a secret all in one. At the age of one hundred-and-twenty, he is more lie than he is Essek. Keeping track of the compulsive falsehoods is inherently a single player game. He needs no one else to challenge himself with a lie, except to add another counter to the board. It’s easy to think of people as counters. Objectively, Essek knows that makes him a monster by most ethical rubrics, but he found it hard to care about his monstrosity until recently. 

The sun overhead rises to its zenith. The Bright Queen sings the noonday hymn, her voice ringing over her people in sonorous waves. 

Essek is thirsty, and he can feel the sunburned tautness of the skin over his cheekbones. It will split and blister, just like his shoulders and back, his arms, the backs of his hands, his chest. If he had no time to trance before this, he will not be able to for days until the burns subside. Essek tries to concentrate on the pain, uncomfortably aware of how his thoughts are drifting. Pain tends to center him; makes him feel real. 

Caught between his lies, his persona as Shadowhand, the airs exhibited to those who would otherwise dismiss him as a new soul, fighting against the possibility of robbing himself of his own achievements… Essek rarely feels real, and every lie further splinters his realities. 

Nothing touches him, not even the ground. He goes from his finely appointed office in the Lucid Bastion home to his finely appointed towers; changes out of his court facade and steps into well-worn silence. He fits into the quiet of his home like a ring into its box. He’s tread grooves into the solitude deeper than the arcane lines across the floor of his study. 

Essek wonders, suddenly and with the bright-hot clarity of a strike to the temple, if he stole the beacons not out solely of greed and pride, but as a subconscious bid to choose his inevitable end. Better a committed heretic than a slow fade. His work and his lies have corroded him away. Drifting for a moment, he whimsically assigns different density values to various stressors and calculates the rate of corrosion based on the remaining surface area of his soul. At the resulting rate, there won’t be much left to put into a beacon, if he is ever consecuted. The thought is darkly funny, and Essek smiles to himself, chapped lips stinging. 

The call to rise and realign with the sun pulls him out of his daze. He and hundreds of others wobble to their feet, turn, and kneel again. Essek’s pulse thuds dully, the sound in his ears like punching a pillow again, and again, and again…. 

Desperate not to spiral again, Essek forces his eyes open to look at the people around him. Emotions on the surrounding faces - what he can see of them with his sun-assaulted eyes - range from miserable discomfort to euphoria. But those are the extremes. Mostly, Essek sees peace, resolved endurance. 

He gets so tangled in his practical, mechanical questions about the beacons despite being immersed in a culture of believers. Then, there are rare moments like this when Essek remembers that worship does not have to be hollow. Thousands upon thousands of souls find solace in something that might not even be a god at all. They do not, Essek realizes, feel lied to, because they believe. They have been able to make their peace with answers Essek finds excruciatingly unsatisfying. 

Essek has something dark and empty in him, some restless, ravenous void, and he has never known - never will know - the peace of faith. And hells, he has tried. All those wasted hours prostrate on the floor of the umavi’s chapel, reaching blindly and with increasing desperation for something that never reached back. 

He hasn’t stopped trying. In moments of deepest weakness, when the lies and the pressure become too much, Essek gravitates to the requisite Luxon shrine in his towers. What draws him isn’t hope, per se. He cannot offer his belief, so his people’s god - if the Luxon is a god - has no reason to offer him anything in return, love least likely. Instead, there is a certain comforting familiarity to sitting tailor-style on the mosaic floor with his head sunk into his hands and his fingers knotted in his hair, staring tearlessly and sightlessly at the foot of the niche with its ever-burning beacon lamp. 

Essek hasn’t visited the shrine in three years. Divine retribution not forthcoming, he allows himself a little superstition. 

Today, he is adrift in a sea of the faithful. He wants to shake them, scrape the answers out of them. How do they know the Luxon loves them? What does their certainty feel like? Why can they accept not knowing the answers to their questions? But he cannot ask them. He cannot so much as voice a thought. Because Essek lies to them all, daily, when he goes through the motions of faith and belief. People surround him on all sides, and Essek is alone on an island of his own making. 

Stars and skies and _fucking_ Light, he _made_ himself alone. He populated his world with hostile mirrors; hypotheticals who also watch their own thoughts from a distance, who wait as he waits to pounce and prey upon weakness. For a slippery moment he has it, the enormity of the realness of other people, the depths of their interiorities each as complex as his own. The weight of the revelation distorts his heart like a singularity. 

Essek’s monstrosity breathes down his neck, and its breath is searing cold. He shivers, vaguely aware that feeling cold under the glare of the sun is either a moral failing or a sign of heat exhaustion. 

If conscience were an equation, he could solve for remorse now that he has regret and something approaching awareness of others. He ought to be remorseful. He knows that much. Regret is new enough. He can do regret splendidly, and, perhaps for now, it is sufficient that he focuses on that. Essek has known himself to be a selfish creature since he was a child. Of course he is a monster, too. His veins flow with venom. 

_You learned it._

Well. He can learn this too, whatever this is. He is a prodigy. 

_Looking at you is like looking in a mirror._

The irony of his world of hostile mirrors is not lost on him. Evil sees evil sees evil ad infinitum. Someone finally claims to see himself reflected in Essek; grace reflects grace reflects grace, ad infinitum. Fuck you, Caleb Widogast, for transmuting an ugly betrayal into a beautiful one. Essek will not waste the cruelest kindness anyone has ever shown him by pretending he is not capable of the same. 

If he could, Essek would wear the pain of that manipulation like a diamond on a ring. No one else has ever given him anything so thoughtfully crafted and tenderly, viciously personal. Until he can find a jeweler, Essek keeps it close, a pretty thing lodged hot and sharp behind his sternum where he can catch his breath on its edges. He admires the loveliness of it, all the faceted truths: grace, hurt, attraction, pity, brutal practicality, fascination, disgust, self-loathing, ravenous hunger for knowledge equal to his own. 

_How high does this darkness go?_

Curiosity is a dreadful addiction. Give and take, there’s no relief. Questions devour; answers beget more questions. Having answers to give is potently intoxicating, almost as dangerous as having questions to ask. 

Essek, unpracticed at sharing, was not prepared for the rush. Thankfully, Caleb proved just as overwhelmed. Things progressed too quickly beyond the purely transactional and the damage was done before either of them found their feet. They entered a slow circling, both desperate to keep the other hooked, neither willing to disengage. 

Until the ship. 

Essek tries not to feel like one of the chained books in the Marble Tomes. He can accept being a beholden conduit to the Dynasty’s high politics. It goes without saying that they will core him hollow for his few Assembly secrets when the moment is ripe. They might even tap him for use of the Lens. All that, he deserves. He will twist anything he can to his advantage, of course, but he will comply. Essek is less certain what he will do if they demand access to his spellbook. His magic is his in a way that his worldly powers are not. Unfortunately, aside from government ins, Essek has nothing to offer but his magic. He supposes he is only good to them now as an object of power, be it political or magical, at their disposal - 'disposal' being the operative word. 

He did not die on the _Balleater _in large part because he is Caleb’s direct, established line of access to dunamancy. While Essek has little loyalty to his country and none to the Assembly, he loves his magic. Would he sell his magic for his life? Essek… isn’t sure. A year ago, he would have signed it all over. Now, flush with new regrets, he thinks he would rather die. He hopes they will not test his resolve, especially because they think they are being kind.__

____

Essek, as much a stranger to kindness as sharing, has no defenses against it. He never expected it would hurt. 

__

If today is proving anything, it is that his physical weakness is almost equal to his moral weakness. Essek only catches the tail-end of the call to rise and turn. He tries to stand- 

__

\- and cannot. 

__

Essek’s legs, never the most reliable, refuse to obey him. His rapid pulse flutters behind his ear like a trapped moth. 

__

The burning sun, the blazing light, the dehydration, the exhaustion, the unfamiliar new-bruise ache of damaged friendship, the endlessly compounding lies, occupational pressure, unrelenting fear of discovery, den expectations, his own merciless standards - all of that, Essek can manage. He must perform flawlessly, _must_. And so, because the cosmos has a sense of humor all its own, it is this small humiliation that breaks something in him. 

__

Essek remains kneeling as if he could ever possibly pass off the weakness as deliberate choice. He closes his sun-dazzled eyes. Already watering, now they stream. Physiological responses to stress are natural, Essek reminds himself, detaching with neat ease of practice to reconfigure his mental landscape into something less hazardous. 

__

Tears might flow, but Essek barely remembers how to cry. Maybe he did know how, once, and forgot. More likely, he deliberately stopped, though he does not remember when. Perhaps when he gave up hoping for anamnesis and realized he, just Essek, had no inherent worth he did not claw together himself, and that no amount of recognition would ever be enough to sate him. 

__

Umavi’s son he might be, but he is lucky den Thelyss kept a new soul, and they make no bones reminding him of it no matter what he achieves. Title and influence and fortune - all the things that make pursuing his real goals possible - would vanish with the loss of his den name, and so he is forced to grit his teeth and lower his eyes to people he has not respected in a century. Somewhere along the line, Essek decided the only opinion he cares about is his own, and he is a severe critic. 

__

“Shadowhand.” 

__

His eyelashes cling, and he takes too long to focus on the speaker. His vision is shot; as his eyes track, everything is stamped across with afterimage flares overlaying a sparkling haze. Even before he finds her face, Essek is smiling softly at the cleric. He smiles softly at everyone, as expected as the floating and the venom and flawlessness. He thinks he knows her, but he cannot dredge her name out of his muddled thoughts. Her sash is pinned with a sun-glare-silver blur that might be a Luminary’s brooch, enough to give him a clerical rank and temple title to call her by. 

__

“Brilliance,” he answers - or tries to answer. Essek chokes on the dryness of his throat. 

__

She presses something cool against his fingertips, and his hand reflexively curls around it. “Watered wine,” she says, with the resonant understanding only an umavi wields. 

__

Essek does not tense, does not flinch. Still sunblind, he averts his eyes, lets his smile turn into a chastened grimace. He is too sunburned for his humiliated flush to show, perhaps the first mercy ever granted him by the Luxon. Too parched to answer without a sip from the cup, Essek spends a sun-stupid instant in quandry. Dilute or not, wine on a fasted stomach while dehydrated is a terrible idea, especially for a heretic traitor who must keep his wits to keep his head on his shoulders. Essek drinks only enough to moisten his tongue and masks the deliberate spillage with conveniently shaking hands. 

__

He closes his eyes, lets the tears continue to flow. He presses his lips together as if he cannot bring himself to speak to her, which is true enough. 

__

The Luminary does not touch him, for which he is intensely grateful. She takes the cup from his unresisting fingers. Potent with terrible empathy, she kneels before him. “There is no shame in this, Shadowhand. There is no shame in being overcome by the Light.” 

__

Maybe the ground will swallow him. Maybe he will burst into flame and leave a cone of neat, grey ash incapable of mortification. Ignoring his burning skin and spinning head, Essek turns laboriously on his treacherous, folded legs until he faces the right direction. The loose fabric of his wrap scrapes soft on the flagstones. The cleric, having waited to see if he would pitch over with heatstroke, leaves once he settles again. 

__

And settle he does. Salt tears drying on his face sting his sunburn. The Shadowhand’s posture is perfect, chin lifted, expression serene. Thoughts glide like beads of mercury to the forefront of his mind, where he weighs and evaluates them.

__

  


__

Hours after the sun slips below the western horizon and the last light dwindles, the plaza is still partly full. The clerics sometimes attribute this to piety, but the unadorned truth is that several hundred sun-stunned drow and other nocturnal folk need a few hours of soothing dark to recoup enough wherewithal to stumble home. Essek is there with them. He daren’t teleport in this state, so he picks himself up at last and floats back to his towers, so weary his toes graze the pavement. 

__

The silent darkness of his towers enfolds him. He slips through his halls miserably, skin aflame, vision still blasted. Passing through the kitchen, he drinks an entire pitcher of water only after blindly dropping and shattering a glass. He drinks half a healing potion, too, beyond caring about the impiety of the action. There are soothing eye-drops in his medicine cabinet. They barely make a difference, but at least the potion keeps the pounding headache tolerable. 

__

Mostly blind, losing his grip on the crystalline barrier between himself and his emotions, Essek arrives at the Luxon shrine. He ends his floating spell, and his knees scream as he lowers himself to the ground. Essek lays himself out on the cool, mosaic floor. The tiles are almost too cold against his sunburns, even though he knows they are the same ambient temperature as the room. 

__

He stares sightlessly and tearlessly at the oh-so-familiar foot of the niche with its ever-burning beacon lamp. The Luxon seems no more present here than in the sun he suffered all day, yet Essek cannot muster the nerve to turn his face away. 

__

The day’s broken epiphanies wash over him. 

__

He cannot continue the way he has been, if only because his new doubts are a liability. 

__

Piece by piece, Essek divests himself of his expectations, his tentative hopes. He was a fool to dream, but would be a greater fool still to ignore a very pointed lesson. He clutches the manipulation tight, savoring the sharp edges. Essek knows a parting gift when it cuts him. As a memento, it’s perfect; pain has always centered him. Whether they accept him again or not, he will always have this. 

__

Essek was alone before. He can be alone again. 

__

He has a very particular skill set, but it is not inflexible. He knows his strengths, his weaknesses. He should feel remorse, but he doesn’t. In the privacy of his thoughts after the peace talks, Essek asked himself if he would, knowing what he does now, go back and change things if he could. The effort to be honest, even to himself, cost him dearly: no. Too much of his self-worth and self-image are invested in his achievements, however reprehensible. The answers he sought - _seeks_ \- are too important to him. Perverse as it is, Essek is still fiercely proud of his subterfuge. He worked hard for it. Like the lies, it is _his_. 

__

Because he likes aspects of his monstrosity too much to part with them just yet, he might as well put them to use. Pride and arrogance have gotten him this far. Contempt, too. 

__

_Umavi_ , Essek sneers. Master manipulator, well-practiced at lying to himself, Essek deliberately goads his ambitions towards this new goal. All his striving for flawlessness buys into the myth of perfect souls, Essek tells himself. He has wasted time paring himself down to the purity of efficiency when he should have been _changing_. To be umavi is to be static. Change is a challenge, a high bar, and it flies in the face of the Luxonborns’ obsession with achess. 

__

Essek lives for a challenge. And that will have to be good enough, because his capacity to attempt real atonement is, for now, limited to the very few people he thinks he might truly care about. Good, even done selfishly to prove a point to himself, is good. 

__

Or so Essek hopes. 

__

Perhaps he is going about this wrong, but it isn’t as though he has anyone to ask. That’s nothing new. And really, why should his moral bankruptcy be anyone else’s responsibility? He’s not so asinine to think goodness will be easy to learn or that someone would deign to hold his hand every step of the way, which is why he chooses to focus on the challenge. Perhaps he will discover better motivations as he goes, and the only way to find them is to try. Essek is a genius, a prodigy, and he will master this or die trying. 

__

Deep in his bones, Essek suspects he really will die trying. Die changing and trying to change. For the time being, he is too tired to hope for anything more. 

__

_Maybe you and I are both damned._

__

So be it. 

__

Essek bares his fangs at the beacon lamp. If he is to go down in flames, he will be spectacular in the meantime. Essek den Thelyss can do better than mere perfection: he can do some good.

__

**Author's Note:**

> > Oh, baby I'm going on  
> When the laureate could tell us why  
> And no preacher could decide  
> Tell me now, oh, baby I'm going on  
> When there is no map, no good advice  
> And no road to paradise  
> \- LP, "One Night In The Sun"  
> [[link to song on youtube]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIgFcIcSRa0)


End file.
